2013 is drawing near its end and it is a special year for us. First, it marks the tenth year with Sonic Charge and Microtonic (happy birthday little drummer boy!). Second, my personal career in music tech began 20 years ago in 1993 with the release of Typhoon for the Yamaha TX16W sampler. To celebrate we decided to take a little break from finalizing Synplant 2.0 (which is already very late, sorry about that fellas) and created a free gift for you all. It is a project that I worked on even before Microtonic but never finished until now. We call it Cyclone because it is a clone of a machine that runs Typhoon: a complete TX16W software emulator in VST and Audio Unit formats.

Cyclone is a true low-level hardware emulator. It simulates all the important circuits of the Yamaha TX16W, including the main 68000 CPU, the properietary Yamaha DSP circuits, the 12-bit sample memory and the 400kHz non-linear DACs. Cyclone not only looks like a real TX16W, it sounds like a real TX16W and it runs the exact same software as a real TX16W.

That last sentence is worth elaborating on. We have not merely created a new virtual instrument with a vintage sound, neither is Cyclone an updated version of Typhoon. Cyclone features a full 68000 emulator that runs the exact same version of Typhoon that was released 14 years ago. This implies that using Cyclone will require a bit more effort than your average modern virtual instrument. But this can also be a very rewarding experience. Regard Cyclone as a time travel portal to an era from the past. The era of the monster dinosaur samplers.

Well if you're prepared to tolerate an early nineties hardware interface to access some interesting transposing and DAC distortion, then yes. Plus it does actually sample (through software emulations of the ADCs).